13 januari 2011 - On December 16 Cursor published a big article about the housing situation of international students. Anyone who has doubts about the amount of the rent or of the service charges, or has a dispute with their landlord, can take steps. There is a committee that can provide assistance in this: the Huurcommissie (rent assessment committee). If you want to know how you may take action, check out below. (SK)

How to check whether your rent is reasonable? 

Your rent consists of basic rent, an advance on gas, water and electricity, and other service costs. You can check all of these with the Rent Committee. 

Basic rent

If you want to know if your basic rent is fair, you can check it at the Rent Committee’s website. They use a point system. You are asked to carefully enter information about your room and the rest of the accommodation, such as the surface area (to be measured at 1.5 meter height), the number of people you share a bathroom with, the outside surface area, etc. The program then calculates a recommended price. Is your rent higher than that? Then you can start a legal procedure. Should you win, then the renter must lower the rent as well as refund the amount you overpaid up to that moment. Note: you have to start a procedure within six months after the start of your housing contract. Say your contract started August 1, you have to make sure you start a procedure no later than February 1. You can still get a rent reduction after six months, but you won’t be able to get a refund for the first six months you overpaid. 

Check: www.huurcommissie.nl/huurprijscheck 

Service costs

If you feel service costs are miscalculated or you’re paying for something you’re not getting, try to first sort matters out with your landlord. If that doesn’t help, you can start a legal procedure with the Rent Committee for the monthly advance. The Committee checks whether the advance matches the services you’re provided with. You’ll need a service cost specification to have this checked. If you don’t have one, you can ask your renter, because he’s obliged to provide you with one.

You can also have the service costs’ final statement checked.  You should receive the previous year’s final statement every year before July 1. (So if you rented a room from August 2009 through July 2010, you should receive the final statement of August-December before July 1, 2010. The final statement of January-July 2010 should be with you before July 1, 2011.) The Rent Committee can check your statement. Your renter must provide you with an overview of the costs as well as be able to prove those costs were real, should it come to a procedure. If they fail to do so, service costs (except gas, water and electricity) will be lowered to zero in retroaction, which would mean you’d be refunded a serious amount of money. You can start a procedure up to two years after you received your final statement, even after you moved. 

Check www.huurcommissie.nl/downloads and click ‘Service costs and rent’ for a leaflet and a procedure form. 

Defects

In case of defects, make sure you contact your renter first. Should he fail to respond (timely), try the accommodation office (only if you arranged your accommodation through TU/e, of course). In case of serious defects (such as leaks) that are not attended to within six weeks after having reported them, you can call on the Rent Committee for a rent reduction. 

General

Note: all the Rent Committee’s information is in Dutch. Prior to taking action, ask someone with a good command of the Dutch language to help you filling out the point check. Should it come to a request for procedure, make sure you have a Dutch person to help you. Google Translate won’t be able to save you in the red-tape jungle you’ll be up against!

Starting a legal procedure costs 25 euro, which will be refunded if you are put in the right. 

Contact details Rent Committee:

www.huurcommissie.nl
Huurcommissie
Postbus 16495
2500 BL Den Haag
phone: 0800-4887243